Assisting Suicide to Be Focus of Trial in Motivational Speaker’s Death

The man in the black car was approaching people on an East Harlem street corner, asking to buy a gun and saying he “wanted to do a Kevorkian.” Kenneth Minor said he shooed the man away, but he returned with a more outrageous request:

The A.T.M. card, Mr. Minor explained, was the payment Mr. Locker, a motivational speaker from Long Island, had given him for assisting in his suicide. No gun was used; instead, Mr. Minor said, he held a knife against the steering wheel while Mr. Locker, 52, thrust his chest into the blade.

As absurd as Mr. Minor’s story may have sounded a year and a half ago, it will hardly be dismissed as frivolous when his trial begins next week.

Months after Mr. Minor’s arrest in July 2009, prosecutors conceded there was evidence that Mr. Locker, who was married with three children, might indeed have been trying to end his own life.

He was in substantial debt, holding a large mortgage and credit card bills while his business revenues fell. He had taken out millions of dollars in insurance policies shortly before his death. He had searched the Web for funeral information, and other witnesses said he had told them he wanted to be killed, according to Manhattan prosecutors. Because of this evidence, prosecutors dropped a first-degree murder charge.

Still, the case is shaping up to be a rare courtroom battle in New York over assisted suicide.

A hearing began Thursday to determine whether Mr. Minor’s confession will be admissible at trial. The hearing will resume next week.

Prosecutors maintain that Mr. Minor, 38, whose criminal record includes drug and robbery arrests, committed second-degree murder because state law, they say, prohibits killing someone, even at the person’s request.

But state law also says that “causing or aiding” someone to commit suicide is second-degree manslaughter, said Mr. Minor’s lawyer, Daniel Gotlin. Mr. Gotlin has argued that his client is, at worse, guilty of manslaughter, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 15 years, as opposed to 25 years to life for murder.

Photo

Jeffrey Locker, a motivational speaker from Long Island, may have had a role in his own death.Credit
jefflocker.com, via Associated Press

The law reserves assisted-suicide charges for cases in which a person takes a passive role in someone’s suicide, prosecutors say. An example would be providing the gun that a man uses to kill himself.

“But,” Peter Casolaro, an assistant district attorney, wrote in a court filing last year, “where a person actually performs or actively assists in performing the overt act resulting in death, such as shooting or stabbing the victim, administering the poison, or holding one under water until death takes place by drowning, his act constitutes murder,” regardless if it was “committed pursuant to an agreement with the victim.”

Justice Carol Berkman, who is presiding over the case, indicated Thursday that because Mr. Minor’s actions might not have been passive, she might not instruct the jury on the law regarding an assisted-suicide defense. Mr. Gotlin will still, however, be able to present evidence to suggest that his client was simply following Mr. Locker’s orders.

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But Mr. Gotlin said New York law did not explicitly say that someone’s actions needed to be passive in order to be considered assisting suicide. Either way, he said, it should be up to the jury to determine whether Mr. Minor’s actions were passive.

Over the past four decades, 16 people in New York have been arrested on accusations of assisting suicide, according to the State Department of Criminal Justice Services. And in that time, only 11 have been convicted of it.

On Thursday, Robert Stewart, a detective who interviewed Mr. Minor, recounted his confession:

Mr. Minor was on Second Avenue somewhere between 122nd and 124th Streets when Mr. Locker approached in a black station wagon. Mr. Locker asked several people in front of a delicatessen about buying a gun, but they all ignored him. He left, but returned and asked Mr. Minor if he could find someone to kill him, offering Mr. Minor $60 to do so.

Mr. Minor took Mr. Locker’s phone number and called him a short while later. He told Mr. Locker to meet him on 121st Street and First Avenue. After getting into Mr. Locker’s car, they drove to the corner of First and Paladino Avenues.

Along the way, Mr. Locker told Mr. Minor he was having financial problems and had been involved in a Ponzi scheme. He said his death needed to appear to be a result of a robbery, so his family could collect insurance money. Mr. Locker was not carrying cash, so the payment was to be his A.T.M. card and pass code.

Once they parked, Mr. Locker asked Mr. Minor to tie his hands behind his back. He then had Mr. Minor get gloves and a knife out of the glove compartment. He asked Mr. Minor to hold the knife against the steering wheel, and after Mr. Locker lunged into it four times, he asked Mr. Minor to move it over so it could strike his heart.

Mr. Locker lunged several more times. He was alive but breathing heavily when Mr. Minor left to go on an A.T.M. spree.

A version of this article appears in print on February 11, 2011, on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Assisting Suicide Will Be Focus Of Trial in Death Of L.I. Speaker. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe